Politics

06/19/2013

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande at EU summit in Brussels in May. Bertrand Langlois/Getty Images

Who says Canada isn’t a world leader in international relations?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s rating of Russia as a minus one on the G8 scale was refreshing. After all, since Moscow elbowed its way into the hallowed hallways of developed, and supposedly like-minded G7 nations in 1997, nobody had dared to say the unsayable – that it was maybe a titch premature.

As for Iran, leader-elect Hassan Rowhani hadn’t even warmed up the presidential chair before Foreign Minister John Baird was declaring him a “puppet” and the whole election thing a sham. Turns out the Ayatollah Khamenei is still in charge. And – why pussyfoot -- everyone knows it.

So much for Canada’s bland-and-boring image. A new era of exciting bare-knuckle diplomacy, Ottawa-style, is long overdue, and as fresh as a splash of whatever fills Lake Ontario these days.

Take German President Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande. A match made in the European Union but definitely not in heaven.

Merkel: Ach! So there you are, you little socialist salamander, ready to hand out more of the taxpayer’s euros to those lazy, quiche-nibbling slackers and running the economy into the ground so decent hard-working Germans can pick up the tab…

Hollande: Enough with your arrogant Teutonic lectures. Je m’en fous. Take some time off, mon ange. Spend a weekend at a spa in Vichy. There’s a special on fiscal relaxation.

The next meeting between President Barack Obama and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai could be more down to earth and candid too.

Karzai: welcome to our country. Not your country. That place next to Pakistan, which we don’t like very much either. And when you reach the door just leave the cheque on the table.

Obama: so you can hand it out to your relatives? I don’t think so. We’ve spent at least $1 trillion on this country and we want results. How much more do we have to put out to get freedom and democracy around here? Cough up or we’re putting the Taliban on the payroll.

Why should the southern hemisphere preserve the niceties of old-fashioned diplomacy? It’s no secret that South African President Jacob Zuma and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe are not best friends, in spite of old freedom-fighting ties.

Zuma: another year, another election fraud. Didn’t I tell you to get those political reforms in order before you ordered the poll? You may have had a lot of surgery, but let’s face it, you’re 89. How long do you expect to go on here?

Mugabe: as long as the botox holds out, sweetie. And if I were you I wouldn’t go strutting around telling the neighbors what to do. You’re just another white man in a black man’s skin. And frankly, it doesn’t look so good on you. I can give you a number of someone to fix that.

All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.- Zhou Enlai.

Olivia Wardhas covered conflict, politics and international diplomacy at the UN, the former Soviet Union, Europe, the Middle East and South Asia, winning national and international awards.

In an unexpected first round win, cleric Hassan Rouhani is set to become Iran’s next president, a national nose-thumbing at hardliners and inflammatory departing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

A stocky 65-year-old, Rouhani had a slow start among eight officially-approved runners but moved up quickly as the reformist favourite when the likely reform candidate bowed out and two moderate former presidents gave him a public boost.

So what’s the outlook for Iran and the new president elect?

Q: How moderate is Rouhani?A: He’s a late bloomer. He started political life as an anti-shah revolutionary, went into exile in Scotland and returned when the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenini took power.

After hard time as a top commander during the Iran-Iraq war, he moved to the centre as an ally of presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami. As a nuclear negotiator he forged a deal to freeze Iran’s uranium enrichment program. In the recent campaign he took a big public step away from Ahmadinejad’s confrontational policies, blamed him for sanctions and economic ruin and promised hope and change.

Q: Did his victory put the boots to the conservatives?A: The results say so. But it's also a win-win-win.Although Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his conservative clique favored some losing hardliners, he also backed off in the face of major public opposition.

The reformers get a surprise goal without a perilous protest. The conservatives get a pragmatic cleric with a good track record and no real power to make radical changes. Khamenei is counting on renewed legitimacy from a bloodless election that gives him democratic points for restraint in a skewed system he largely controls.

Q: So the reformers are happy?A: The celebrations are on -- for now. But few trust the current politicians and many want the kind of root-and-branch reform that won’t happen without a re-set of the system – with a new constitution that upholds democracy and human rights.

Q: So nothing much will change in Iran?A: Remains to be seen. Iran’s political landscape was fractured under Ahmadinejad, who had a notorious split with Khamenei. If Rouhani can get the establishment behind economic and social reforms beleaguered Iranians could breathe easier -- as long as Khamenei takes the disenchanted mood of the public seriously. But it also depends on lifting of the crushing international sanctions, which have flattened the once-thriving oil economy and the futures of Iranians.

Q: And the prospects for a new nuclear deal?A: Better than zero – the outlook under Ahmedinejad. Rouhani was the West’s most liked Iranian nuclear negotiator, and he understands how to deal. But since then the Supreme Leader’s line has hardened, and he still has the final say. The election is a signal to the West that a deal could be done. Or that a smilier public face will be at the table for the next nuclear talks.

Olivia Wardhas covered conflicts, politics and human rights in the former Sovier Union, Europe, South Asia and the Middle East. Most recently she wrote a guide to Iran's election.

Enter London Mayor Boris Johnson, who believed his cat had been attacked by a fox in his north London neighbourhood. He was so enraged, Boris said, he considered using his rifle to dispatch the offending critter to fox heaven.

"This will cause massive unpopularity and I don't care," the Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying. "If people want to get together to form the fox hounds of Islington I'm all for it."

So this is a good idea and there's no way anyone's going to get mad about it, because if there's one thing British people are indifferent about it's animals.

"We can only assume the mayor is joking with this prepostorous suggestion," Joe Duckworth, who heads the League Against Cruel Sports, an anti-hunting group, told Metro. "He cannot seriously be suggesting that packs of dogs should be allowed to hunt wildlife through the city or that people should be able to freely walk around with dangerous firearms."

He probably wasn't serious. (But then, with Boris, who knows.) Aside from all that, wading -- even jokingly -- into the fox-hunting issue is also a bad idea. Foxes have fans, and hunting with dogs was outlawed by Tony Blair's Labour government. Despite rumblings from hunt supporters, it's unlikely to be repealed.

But still. The image of a pack of red-clad horsemen galloping down Streatham High Street or through Oxford Circus is pretty funny. Boris does it again. Tally ho.

Jennifer Quinn is a foreign affairs and investigative reporter at the Star. As a journalist with the Associated Press, based in London, she wrote extensively about British politics. Follow her on Twitter @JQStar.

Gillard appears to have handled the onslaught of crap deftly, but we should remember that she is used to this. She has long been outspoken on the issue of sexism in Australia and made headlines around the world when she -- quite frankly -- flattened opposition leader Tony Abbot during a debate in 2012.

"If he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn't need a motion in the House of Representatives," Gillard said, "he needs a mirror. That's what he needs."

Ouch. It goes on for about 15 minutes. (Video is here, and it's a real pick-me-up on a grey day.)

And it was at a fundraiser for the opposition where "Julia Gillard quail" with "small breasts, huge thighs and a big red box" was on the menu. (The restaurant owner now says it was a private joke -- hilarious, right? -- and was never meant for public consumption. Whoops.)

Before asking about her partner's sexuality, the talk interviewer said to Gillard "myth, rumour, snide jokes and innuendos -- you've been the butt of them many times."

"Oh, I think that's right," Gillard said. "We've certainly seen that this week."

(Also Wednesday: a guest on a radio show uses a slur to describe provincial NDP leader Andrea Horwath.)

So it seems the penultimate line in Gillard's speech on women in politics was particularly prescient: "Women's equality has always been hard-fought for, and we're entering a hard fight again."

Jennifer Quinn is a foreign affairs and investigative reporter at the Star. Follow her on Twitter @JQStar.

06/10/2013

Samantha Power with President Barack Obama in the White House Rose Garden after her nomination as the new U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations last week. (Jason Reed /Reuters)

Praised as a “femme fatale” of humanitarian assistance, and slagged as one of the top 10 “most dangerous people” in the Obama administration, Samantha Power seemed an unlikely candidate for the sedate corridors of high diplomacy.

Unsurprisingly, President Barack Obama’s nomination of the Irish-born human rights firebrand as Washington’s UN ambassador has drawn a firestorm of debate, especially on the Republican right.

Most of it revolves around the odds on senate confirmation for a “controversial” (read outspoken) figure who has said undiplomatic things about military intervention to protect endangered civilians, the U.S’s “double standards” in foreign policy, including a slant toward Israel, the need for self-criticism about Washington’s not-so-honorable past, and the failures of the United Nations itself,

The fact that Republicans have held up Obama’s nominations for the Environmental Protection Agency, Labor Secretary and the consumer Financial Protection Bureau – as well as blocking three vacancies on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is not encouraging.

Power, a Pulitzer prize winning journalist, author, academic and human rights crusader, does have some unexpected support on the right from Sen. John McCain and her former professor, fiercely pro-Israel lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who says she is “perfectly suited” to the UN job.

And he adds, “she is not a diplomat by nature, and that is precisely what the United Nations needs.”

But what about Power herself?

Not notoriously patient, she would inherit a job that requires hours of teeth-grinding debate in a forum where the placement of a comma can be argued for weeks if sensitive subjects are on the table.

Her championing of the responsibility to protect vulnerable civilians will be severely tested when going mano a mano with Russia over tougher measures against Syria. Moscow still treasures hopes of a victory – or peace deal – that would keep President Bashar al Assad in power and maintain its own foothold in the war-torn country.

Power will also have to carry the flag for Washington’s views on the missing-in-action Middle East peace process, which is unlikely to reboot while the pace of Israeli settlements in the West Bank gathers speed.

Then there’s the UN Security Council itself, which she said in a New Republic essay was “anachronistic, undemocratic and consists of countries that lack the standing to be considered good faith arbiters of how to balance stability against democracy, peace against justice and security against human rights.”

UN watchers will be rooting for her, regardless. If Power does take her seat at the UN high table it could give diplomacy a new lease on life – as a spectator sport.

Olivia Ward has covered the United Nations, as well as the former Soviet Union, Europe, the Middle East, South Asia and the U. S., winning national and international awards.

06/04/2013

Well, this is unusual: A scoop SO BIG the newspaper with the scoop can't, you know, say anything about it.

According to the Mail on Sunday, Downing Street has been "rocked" by a "sensational love affair" that is "dynamite" and apparently Prime Minister David Cameron has been told about it by his aides and he was "stunned" and "immediately realized the importance of the story" and ... etc.

For legal reasons, the newspaper says, they can't publish anything about who the alleged lovers are or the details of the relationship - except that they're middle-aged.

You will note that today is Tuesday, and the news broke over the weekend. I held off writing about it, in part, because I was waiting to see what might come out in yesterday's papers. The answer: not much. Follow-up stories mainly focused on the fact that speculation was rife across SW1.

Now, I don't know who the alleged parties are, and my guess is that unless you're a Westminster insider, you won't, either - even when, or if, details come to light.

But this is a nice chance to have a chat about the Daily Mail and its Sunday counterpart. They are right-of-centre - which is kind of putting it mildly - middle-market papers, which make them a cross between a tabloid and a broadsheet. And they sell incredibly well; their circulation is second only to that of The Sun and the Sun on Sunday.

The Mail brand is powerful, the editors know what their readers want - stories about family, government, celebrity - and it's also a totally guilty pleasure (back when the Sunday papers in the UK were actually big broadsheets, I used to buy the Mail on Sunday and the now-defunct News of the World and hide them inside the very worthy Observer when I walked home from the newsagents. Then the Observer downsized and unless you buy the Sunday Times or Telegraph, which are still big, everyone knows what you're reading!)

Alas, there's no mention of the alleged Downing Street affair story on the front page incredibly successful - and completely time-stealing - Mail Online site today.

But don't worry. I'll keep an eye on it.

Jennifer Quinn is a foreign affairs and investigative reporter at the Star. As a journalist with the Associated Press, based in London, she wrote extensively about British politics. Follow her on Twitter @JQStar.

Gates is in Australia, and has made headlines over the past few days for
challenging China to increase the amount of money it commits to international
aid. Its current expenditure, Gates says, is "modest."

Moyo, meantime, is among Africa's most visible economic critics.

In her first book,
Dead Aid, published in 2009, Moyo condemned foreign aid to Africa, suggesting it
helps foster corruption and a sense of dependence and discourages
entrepreneurship.

But Gates is a huge proponent of aid.

Cue the clash of personalities.

I interviewed Moyo last July and today she emailed to say that Gates in a
Q&A period in Australia told an audience that she "promotes evil" and doesn't "know much
about aid."

"Such attacks add no value
in the important discussions on the challenges the world faces to deliver
economic growth, eradicate poverty, combat disease, and reduce income
inequality, to name a few."

A video posted on YouTube shows Gates answering a question about Moyo's book.

"The number of children dying in africa over past 20 years has been cut in half," Gates said, adding that Moyo's book, which he read, "actually did damage generosity of first world countries.

"I found that she didn't know much about aid, what aid is doing. She is an aid critic. It's moralistically a tought position to take.. books like that, they're promoting evil."

Moyo answers Gates' criticism that she doesn't know much about aid by
highlighting both her resume--she has been a consultant to the World Bank--and
first-hand knowledge that comes from being born and raised in Zambia, one of the
poorest aid-recipients in the world.

"I wrote Dead
Aidto contribute to a useful debate on why, over many decades, multi
billions of dollars of aid has consistently failed to deliver sustainable
economic growth and meaningfully reduce poverty," Moyo says. "I also sought to
explicitly explain how decades of government to government aid actually
undermined economic growth and contributed to worsening living conditions across
Africa.

"More than this, I clearly detailed better ways for African leaders, and
governments across the world, to finance economic development. I have been under
the impression that Mr. Gates and I want the same thing – for the livelihood of
Africans to be meaningfully improved in a sustainable way. Thus, I have always
thought there is significant scope for a mature debate about the efficacy and
limitations of aid. To say that my book “promotes evil” or to allude to my
corrupt value system is both inappropriate and disrespectful."

Rick Westhead is a foreign
affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South
Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on
international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

The Canadian government doesn't want you to know most of the lessons it learned in the wake of the Arab Spring.

To recap, Canada's foreign affairs ministry managed responses to a string of emergencies from January to May 2011 as dictatorial governments faced the prospect of overthrow in countries such as Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen.

Canada's foreign affairs ministry later commissioned a report to identify the lessons Canadian diplomats learned during the crises.

While those findings are included in the "Middle East and North Africa Crisis After Action Report," the vast majority have been redacted in a copy obtained by The Star under the Access to Information Act. This from a Canadian government that pledged when it took power in 2006 to offer the most open, transparent leadership Canadians had seen in years.

The foreign affairs ministry is willing to share snippets of information, such as "The government's consular response to the MENA emergencies was exceptional, involving the deployment of 47 DFAIT personnel to the region to assist with emergency management and the assignment of over 300 employees to the operations centre mainly to answer telephone calls from concerned citizens."

The report outlines how a brainstorming session was conducted with DFAIT senior management in February 2011, to determine how DFAIT would conduct its after action review. The ministry decided to debrief staff and create an interdepartmental survey.But most of its recommendations are too sensitive to share with Canadians.

Pages five through nine of the report are blacked out, citing Section 21 (1) a of The Access to Information Act, under which, "The head of a government institution may refuse to disclose any record requested that contains advice or recommendations developed by or for a government institution or a minister of the Crown."

On page 10 of the report, a breakthrough: recommendations No. 15, 17, and 18 have not been redacted:

"15. A dedicated resource should be identified in times of emergency to manage information flow, provide data to CFM and CED so that they can proactively interact with senior government officials, and respond to other inquiries.

17. Systematically record, and periodically update, a message which provides callers with key, general information on the emergency and/or directs callers to DFAIT's website for more information.

18. promote use of the department's online form as a means of registering a concern or enquiry regarding the wellbeing or whereabouts of an affected person."Page 11 is mostly blacked out, this time citing Section 15 (1), which allows the refusal of information that "could reasonably be expected to be injurious to the conduct of international affairs, the defence of Canada or any state allied or associated with Canada or the detection, prevention or suppression of subversive or hostile activities..."There is one exception - recommendation No. 19.

"Missions should complete the new MEP in detail, using a whole-of-mission approach. They then should train staff and test their plans, using the resources in CEP for assistsance if they are unsure how to conduct such an exercise."

Pages 12 through 18 are blacked out. And then a breakthrough on page 19:

"Recommendation 40. Emergency resource kits should be created for deployment into an emergency, including individual survival kits and kits to facilitiate operation of mobile offices or command posts. Consideration should be given as to where to locate the kits, i.e., in Ottawa, at missions or with the REMOs. Specific checklists should be made available online so missions can build their own kits."

The next page, No. 20, similarly offers a single morsel:

"Recommendation 42. Include emergency management training in the schedule of mandatory pre-posting training for all CBS going abroad, including those from OGDs."On Page 24, we learn "Canada evacuated 868 Canadian-entitled persons and 100 foreign nationals from Egypt and Libya during the Arab spring... (and) responded to 24000 emergency related calls."

Pages 25 through 38 are mostly blacked out, too, before the report's final page tells readers that "pages 39 to 111 withheld pursuant to section 26, under which "The head of a government institution may refuse to disclose any record requested ... if the head of the institution believes on reasonable grounds that the material in the record or part thereof will be published by a government institution, agent of the Government of Canada or minister of the Crown within ninety days..."

Rick Westhead is a foreign
affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South
Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on
international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

05/29/2013

Microsoft founder and
philanthropist Bill Gates gives a speech to the Australian National Press on
Tuesday in Canberra. Gates urged China to boost foreign aid. (AP Photo/Rod McGuirk)

Bill Gates is calling out China.

The Microsoft tycoon said in Australia on Tuesday that China should be
more active in international aid and development.

“I think that there is a real opportunity there. What they’ve done to date,
as far as anything that is visible, is quite modest,” Gates said, according to
Devex.com, an Australian-based website that reports on aid issues.

“I am hopeful that Chinese aid, both in terms of the quality of the aid and
the quantity of the aid, will continue to increase," he said.

China’s
development budget has been under scrutiny in recent months. While the state
doesn’t disclose all of its spending, researchers have analyzed China’s aid commitments in Africa.

Gates’s call to action is not limited to China. He has evolved into a
formidable fundraiser for the developing world’s most pressing problems, coaxing
many of the world’s rich and famous to leave some of their fortunes to charities, including his own, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Through an effort dubbed The Giving Pledge, Gates and fellow billionaire Warren Buffett have convinced more than 100 billionaires to give half of their fortunes to charity.

Earlier this month, Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, became the first female billionaire to join the pledge, Forbes magazine reported. Blakely was among eight new members, taking the pledge total to 114 billionaires since it started in 2010.

Devex also notes that Gates has been a public ally to China, defending it in a fight over technology
with Google, and negotiating on behalf of one of the companies he has helped finance to sell wave reactor technology to China.

Rick Westhead is a foreign
affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South
Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on
international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

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